Harley Street Psychiatrist Accused Of Conversion Therapy By Trans Patient

A high-profile Harley Street psychiatrist who calls trans rights campaigners “trans terrorists” has been reported to the General Medical Council (GMC) after a patient claims he was “attempting to practice transgender conversion therapy," i News has revealed.

Dr. Az Hakeem, a fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, calls himself “gender critical” and “the only psychiatrist” to specialize in “exploratory psychotherapy to persons suffering from gender dysphoria.” He has denied being anti-trans, said his service is “neutral,” and denied offering conversion therapy.

But an 18-year-old former patient, a trans man, has accused Dr. Hakeem of deploying “coercive strategies” in an attempt to “make me cis[gender].”

The GMC, which is the governing body for doctors and psychiatrists, is currently conducting initial inquiries into the allegations. If the complaint leads to a professional conduct hearing it will be the first time in history that a British psychiatrist has had to face allegations of conversion therapy against a transgender patient.

Currently, there is no law prohibiting conversion therapy, so the only recourse patients who are treated by psychiatrists have is the complaints system of the GMC.

Its “good medical practice” guidelines tells doctors: “You must not express your personal beliefs (including political, religious, and moral beliefs) to patients in ways that exploit their vulnerability or are likely to cause them distress.”

And it warns against “allowing your personal views to affect your professional relationships or the treatment you provide or arrange.” But although the GMC publicly condemns conversion therapy, there is no specific rule against it.

The patient, who wants to remain anonymous but we will call Lyle, speaks out in an exclusive interview with i News, in which he says he felt he had to go to the session to avoid being thrown out the family home.

Lyle’s complaint to the GMC relates to an assessment he had with Dr. Hakeem last year when he was 17. It alleges the psychiatrist used a range of tactics denying the validity of his gender identity – and that of trans people generally.

He felt that the psychiatrist “invalidated my opinions, then imposed his view of gender,” the complaint reads. “He made it clear from the very start that he was skeptical of my gender and expressed doubt that it could differ to [my] sex.”

Lyle accuses Dr. Hakeem of disbelieving that his gender identity is male and of trying to encourage Lyle to unpick it in order that he could live as a woman.

“He suggested that there was little difference between my gender, and his teen goth identity, implying that it might fade equally fast. He also likened gender-affirming surgeries to race-imitation surgeries,” wrote Lyle in the complaint. “He asked me ‘why’ I believed I had gender dysphoria, and would not accept that it’s because I’m trans.”

Lyle added: “He berated me for lacking ‘curiosity.’ He attempted to ridicule my experience of gender… He requested reasons behind my gender dysphoria so he could attempt to solve it and make me cis.”

The complaint comes amid uproar from both the LGBTQ+ and mental health sectors over the British Government’s decision to exclude trans people from its proposed ban on conversion therapy. This practice refers to an attempt to make gay people heterosexual or to make trans people cisgender – to live as the sex on their birth certificate. Next month, parliament will debate whether to include trans people in the forthcoming ban, following a petition that attracted over 144,000 signatures.

All major health bodies in Britain, including the NHS, GMC, and Royal College of Psychiatrists oppose conversion therapy in all forms as ineffective and harmful.

“It should never be appropriate for a clinician to actively dissuade a person from transitioning,” a spokesperson for the Royal College of Psychiatrists said in an interview.

“Psychological treatments to suppress or ‘revert’ gender-diverse behaviors… are not grounded in science and therefore unethical and unacceptable forms of treatment.”

The General Medical Council’s medical director, Professor Colin Melville, said that conversion therapy is “inherently harmful and coercive and therefore a clear breach of the standards we expect of all doctors registered in the UK… We take very seriously any allegation about a doctor engaging in this practice.”

Dr. Hakeem enjoys a prominent public platform, having been a guest psychologist on reality TV shows such as Big Brother, and by writing, speaking, and tweeting regularly about trans issues. His website says he does not try to “persuade or dissuade anyone from pursuing physical sex interventions such as hormones or surgery” but instead provides a “neutral exploration space to think about sex and gender.”

However, for the past 20 years, Dr. Hakeem has publicly and repeatedly stated his beliefs about trans identities. He has signed letters to The Times newspaper arguing that gay people who transition are a “glaring example” of conversion therapy, and that the government should delay any ban on trans conversion therapy.

In a 2021 interview with Transgender Trend, an organization accused of being anti-trans, Dr. Hakeem said, “very black and white thinking… is characteristic of a Trans mind,” called trans activists “trans terrorists,” and referred to the “psychopathology of the trans condition.”

But the World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases – to which the UK is signed up – removed gender incongruence from its list of mental health disorders in early 2021. Trans people therefore do not have a condition that requires psychiatric treatment and as such in gender identity clinics it is specialist gender clinicians who assess them.

For years, Dr. Hakeem has run group therapy sessions for trans patients, which, he has said, “typically” result in those patients’ gender dysphoria being “completely resolved” in 6–12 months.

Last year, he called the “affirmation model” – referring to therapy that supports LGBTQ+ people’s identity – “unhelpful” and “potentially dangerous” when used with transgender people.

But according to Dr. Stuart Lorimer, a consultant psychiatrist and specialist gender clinician who spoke to i News, affirmative therapy does not mean “simply saying yes to the patient” regarding their sexuality or gender identity, and “does not preclude appropriate and ethical exploration of the patient’s distress.”

This is supported by the Memorandum of Understanding on conversion therapy, a 2017 document signed by multiple major health organizations, including NHS England.

Dr. Hakeem’s stance on trans people can be traced back to 2002. In a letter to the Telegraph, he objected to the European court’s landmark ruling that Christine Goodwin, a trans woman, could legally marry a man.

He called it “a victory for fantasy over reality,” arguing that transgender people “seek surgery to make their fantasy real” but are “left with a mutilated body,” and therefore the ruling “risks reinforcing a false belief that it is possible to actually change a person’s gender.” Rather than referring to Goodwin, who was post-operative, as “her,” Dr. Hakeem used the male pronoun.

Lyle said he is left with worse mental health following his experience, which he characterizes as conversion therapy.

“I have panic attacks,” said Lyle. He calls it “the fortnightly breakdown” because he mostly suppresses the memories of his time with Dr. Hakeem, but “when I remember it, it is really bad. And it always happens alone at night when I’m in bed reading articles. And then I’ll have a panic attack. I’ll be up for a few more hours.”

“Whenever I read about him [Hakeem], it gets to me a lot,” he said. “I’ll notice that I’m shaking and I’m crying.”

Lyle now needs regular sessions with another therapist. He is surprised how much his experiences have affected him, after just one session. “I felt very, very disempowered and very, very vulnerable,” he said. It is this effect that helped persuade him to lodge a complaint and now to speak out publicly.

The problems for Lyle began soon after he came out as trans to his mother last summer. “At first, she was shell-shocked, but asked lots of questions,” he said. His mother then began to do some research.

“What I hadn’t quite realized at the time, is that her research had been in very, very anti-trans circles,” he said. He later found printouts lying around the house of organizations his mother had contacted asking for advice.

They included Transgender Trend, an organization whose founder said if a pupil comes out as trans in school, teachers should out them to their parents – an action the National Education Union said would be a criminal